The future of the Club

[Boyo]

As a Club what are we trying to achieve?

The sense that I get, is that the Club is increasingly more interested in developing players, who go on and (hopefully) make a name for themselves in the future. Youth development has always been Taggy’s ‘baby’ and now there’s talk of significant investment in the training infrastructure to facilitate this. The fact we are a football league club and we have punters chucking money over the turnstiles and through Trust subs / other avenues gives the Club a platform to develop local talent.

I think the vast majority of the fans would want the focus to be on attaining the highest possible position in the football pyramid.

Now if the investment in training infrastructure and having Cat 2 Academy status is perceived as the best mechanism to ensure we reach and maintain the highest position in the football pyramid then I’m all for investment in these areas. I suspect however that’s not the case. The ongoing annual investment for a Car 2 Academy appears to be so high that it will actually be detrimental to the fortunes of the first team in the future.

I’d like to see a presentation from the Club with regards what our short and medium term aims are and how we intend to achieve these.

Where’s the Trust? What are they doing?

 

[shoot on sight]

Excellent post -got it in one!
Youth development hasn't really done Crewe any favours the last couple of years has it?

 

[rightwing]

As a Club what are we trying to achieve?

The sense that I get, is that the Club is increasingly more interested in developing players, who go on and (hopefully) make a name for themselves in the future. Youth development has always been Taggy’s ‘baby’ and now there’s talk of significant investment in the training infrastructure to facilitate this. The fact we are a football league club and we have punters chucking money over the turnstiles and through Trust subs / other avenues gives the Club a platform to develop local talent.

I think the vast majority of the fans would want the focus to be on attaining the highest possible position in the football pyramid.

Now if the investment in training infrastructure and having Cat 2 Academy status is perceived as the best mechanism to ensure we reach and maintain the highest position in the football pyramid then I’m all for investment in these areas. I suspect however that’s not the case. The ongoing annual investment for a Car 2 Academy appears to be so high that it will actually be detrimental to the fortunes of the first team in the future.

I’d like to see a presentation from the Club with regards what our short and medium term aims are and how we intend to achieve these.

Where’s the Trust? What are they doing?

That's the problem in having a chairman whose main focus is in youth development. When he works at the Cat and Fiddle on a daily basis with Tisdale and Perryman it is obviously difficult to focus on the main issues at the Club. The Trust has to take the bull by the horns and redress the balance. The suitable development of the main stadium should be the primary target at the moment, not the Cat and Fiddle. However the Trust appears to be too weak to do anything about it.

 

[malcolms]

That's the problem in having a chairman whose main focus is in youth development. When he works at the Cat and Fiddle on a daily basis with Tisdale and Perryman it is obviously difficult to focus on the main issues at the Club. The Trust has to take the bull by the horns and redress the balance. The suitable development of the main stadium should be the primary target at the moment, not the Cat and Fiddle. However the Trust appears to be too weak to do anything about it.

The Trust and it's so called "ownership" of the club has become an irrelevance. It doesn't need to be so, but in reality it is...We have it from the people who have served, that the main aim of the Trust Board resides in developing committee responsibility for almost anything other than ensuring the club becomes an ambitious member of the Football League. If it were to happen, then I'm sure they wouldn't complain about it, but they are not about to risk anything to make it a reality. I appears more time is devoted to CSR, ethnic and gender equality than is ever given over to the stated aim of the business and this is patently ridiculous. The process is stagnant which is why anything associated with it is beginning to stagnate....

 

[Boyo]

The Trust and it's so called "ownership" of the club has become an irrelevance. It doesn't need to be so, but in reality it is...We have it from the people who have served, that the main aim of the Trust Board resides in developing committee responsibility for almost anything other than ensuring the club becomes an ambitious member of the Football League. If it were to happen, then I'm sure they wouldn't complain about it, but they are not about to risk anything to make it a reality. I appears more time is devoted to CSR, ethnic and gender equality than is ever given over to the stated aim of the business and this is patently ridiculous. The process is stagnant which is why anything associated with it is beginning to stagnate....

You need to risk failure in order to succeed.

The "at no risk to the Club" mantra is severely limiting and is increasingly becoming an anchor around our neck.

 

[grecianstew]

Whilst of course, an effective anchor can prevent you from being shipwrecked on the rocks.

 

[ExeterCitysRealDeal]

Whilst of course, an effective anchor can prevent you from being shipwrecked on the rocks.

Also keeping the nautical theme 'A shark dies if it stops moving'. Are we stopping moving forward at the sharp end i.e. on the pitch??

 

[Red Bill]

The Trust and it's so called "ownership" of the club has become an irrelevance. It doesn't need to be so, but in reality it is...We have it from the people who have served, that the main aim of the Trust Board resides in developing committee responsibility for almost anything other than ensuring the club becomes an ambitious member of the Football League. If it were to happen, then I'm sure they wouldn't complain about it, but they are not about to risk anything to make it a reality. I appears more time is devoted to CSR, ethnic and gender equality than is ever given over to the stated aim of the business and this is patently ridiculous. The process is stagnant which is why anything associated with it is beginning to stagnate....

I personally perceive the problem to be that the Trust still hasn't really decided what its for. Unfortunately there's no open forum for this to be discussed by the wider membership, so its left to a small executive to decide what its role is, which I think breeds an atmosphere of caution that leads to a reluctance to take part in any major decisions, deferring all to the club board.
I'm a fervent supporter of the trust and fan ownership in general, but that doesn't mean I think we don't need to change. There has been some good progress with regard to taking more control, with equal representation on the club board and checking good practice, but from my very limited experience of the TB, i definitely witnessed a serious reluctance to get involved in the actual running of the club beyond the bureaucratic and procedural aspects, and a feeling among some trustees that that shouldn't be something the trust gets involved in anyway.

Whilst i believe its right that the actual running of the club should be delegated to the board and employees, I think its vital the the Trust starts to act like owners and sets the agenda and goals for the club and waves its stick when things go off course. This must I believe be a matter for the entire trust membership to decide and an apparatus for discussion among members to decide what the clubs aims should be must be instituted if this is going to happen. There's a lot of talk on here that Tagg is the problem and as long as he's there nothing will change, I don't buy that, he may be the chairman but he's a titular head rather than a traditional football club chairman, he has as much power as we the members let him have. If we want change then we have to collectively make it happen, not leave it to the dozen or so members of the TB and the moan when things don't go the way we think they should, but all 3000+ of us, find a way to use the power of all of us to force change.

AS the OP says, above all what most of us want is success on the pitch, it is after all a football club not some new burgeoning nation. Yes we all understand the need for it to remain stable and viable, but we still mainly just want to see some good football and our team playing well and challenging. We are in a fortunate position at our club, in that as fans we have the power to set the agenda for how we go about achieving that, the challenge for me is to get the trust membership to realise and exercise that power and ensure that this simple desire is top of our club's priorities.

 

[Lager Lout]

I increasingly get the impression that the club's remit is 'jobs for the boys':

- Keep the club financially stable
- Keep people in employment

It's as though getting a result on a match day is a third priority or something!

LL

 

[ExeterCitysRealDeal]

The Trust and it's so called "ownership" of the club has become an irrelevance. It doesn't need to be so, but in reality it is...We have it from the people who have served, that the main aim of the Trust Board resides in developing committee responsibility for almost anything other than ensuring the club becomes an ambitious member of the Football League. If it were to happen, then I'm sure they wouldn't complain about it, but they are not about to risk anything to make it a reality. I appears more time is devoted to CSR, ethnic and gender equality than is ever given over to the stated aim of the business and this is patently ridiculous. The process is stagnant which is why anything associated with it is beginning to stagnate....

You need to risk failure in order to succeed.

The "at no risk to the Club" mantra is severely limiting and is increasingly becoming an anchor around our neck.

Great post malcolms and Boyo! For me the problem is that we constantly sing 'we own our club, we own our club' but in reality it is a bit of a falsehood in that the Trust doesn't own all the club (not all shares) and in reality certainly in the short term (1-2 years) the club entity could survive without the Trust's contribution. Until the Trust either radically enhances its revenue generation (not just Trust subs) or gets some proper hardnosed business savvy BOS members then it is always going to be looked at as the annoying little brother of the actual club which wants to play but isn't strong enough or good enough to keep the 'older brothers' attention i.e. ECFC. The truth of course is that the Trust should actually be the parent in the relationship but it clearly isn't and is stuck in a vacuum of egos, do gooders and free loaders who neither have the stomach, ability or will to truly push things forward and it will probably take a Doomsday scenario for it to happen by which stage 'Rome will be on fire' and it will be too late.

Having said all of that to answer Boyos original question I personally feel that if we can upgrade the training facilities to get Cat 2 or at least raise the standard of training all the way through the club from 1st team to under 8's which produces results then that is the best way for the club to grow and take root as far up the football pyramid as possible which I personally feel could be the bottom end of the Championship/top end of League 1 (within 10 years if managed correctly). If you are a manufacturer of a product which you hope to sell at perceived premium you would likely look to invest in your manufacturing equipment and facilities to improve the end product which is what I see the 3G pitch as in this regard. But again for you to be able to sell at a perceived premium price you have to be in a strong enough financial position to be able to hold out for the prices you want and not exposed so you have to shake the first hand that comes your way. Exeter is a growing city with an already sizable catchment area if cultivated correctly in the coming years, clubs in much smaller areas have survived in the Premier League let alone the Championship. Just because something has never happened before doesn't mean it can't happen in the future else we would all still be riding horses to and from work etc. But the 1st team has always got to be made a priority with enough money invested to bring success to encourage better crowds, sponsorship, hospitality, TV money etc, etc whilst also increasing future transfer fees received for our players if they perform at a higher level. The three things: 1) Youth System, 2) First Team and 3) Stadium/Revenue Generation all have a massive part to play in ECFC’s success in the future and you can’t sacrifice any one of them without it badly effecting the other so all three need to have the available and required funds allocated to them where possible.

The 'at no risk to the Club' mantra is fine in times of struggle or preparation for times of struggle but in times where you have you opportunity you have to 'speculate to accumulate' with educated decisions and if the people in charge aren't capable or able to make the correct educated decisions then they don't have a God given right to their current roles and should be reminded of that.....